Novell hints at a conference all that Sun may not be able to open up solaris so easily since Novell claims copyrights and patents remain with Novell. Is this preventing the development of what may be the most powerful open source operating system in existance?
Novell May Try To Stop OpenSolaris
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This makes sense. One of Linux’s main “selling” points is that it’s open source. Novell don’t want a real unix system competing with them.
“the most powerful open source operating system in existence” is going to need developers. Sun doesn’t exactly draw a big crowd to its banner.
HI!
I think Solaris, and Windows and other proprietary operating systems should continue/stay in closed source of their operating system and patent their new features to not allow opensource operating systems community take their ideas.
Patents are the only great thing that man created, because they garantee the research of new ideas, and don’t allow other people to copy them without authorization of the owner of the patent.
PATENT’s protect programmers for spend their time/work ( could be lots of years) doing a software from being copied.
Software is like a book, if you copy a book no author will be interested in write a book because there would be no profit. No author would like to spend years writing something for free. No research, no new ideas, and so on..
I think OSNEWS should defend this values, isn’t it Eugenia?
CROND
Sunw has been “considering” opensourcing solaris for about five years now. It’s all just a PR stunt.
Sunw does not own sysV, and therefore cannot legally opensource it. HPQ, IBM, SGI, and NOVL, would all have a case against sunw.
“Novell hints at a conference all that Sun may not be able to open up solaris so easily since Novell claims copyrights and patents remain with Novell.”
Now we can see who is who…
//
Sunw does not own sysV, and therefore cannot legally opensource it. HPQ, IBM, SGI, and NOVL, would all have a case against sunw.
//
moore or less as IBM cant legally opensource OS/2, though sometimes they have appeared likely to do…
@ crond: seems you’re not an IT employee or freelance SW solution developer … i think you’d not be so happy about SW patents (words from an italian CS engineer who is foreseeing many headaches… )
I’m a president of one software company.
Novell is no different from SCO. Neither is IBM. They’ve just hooked their success to the success of Linux and so they are defending Linux with the exact same FUD that SCO would use against it. These aren’t good corporate citizens. They’ve just realized that they can’t compete with Microsoft by themselves. They need to use what the community has already created.
The community seems to have gotten behind IBM as their savior. IBM seems to have no interest in free software beyond making other people write the base for their proprietary software to run over. Can anyone say DB2 platform?
Although Novell has so far contributed a lot to the community, they are showing thier teeth here. They have invested a lot in Linux and they don’t want to see a competitor to it. They have bought both SuSE and Ximian for sizable amounts which gives them a lot of control over the direction of the Linux platform and now Sun wants to bring in a new open OS which aims for the same market – UNIX takeoffs – that Novell has no part of. I don’t know anything about Linux vs. Solaris’ technical merit, but I would assume they are in the same range at least which means that Sun could use an open source Solaris to move people away from Linux which is Novell’s entire future (I remember back before Novell’s intentions became so apparant – they had said that the Linux kernel would probably become the basis of the new NetWare – people still took their word against SCO’s as impartial. Well, they certainally don’t seem to simply be favoring freedom and justice now. They are clearly partial to Linux).
Of course, Sun is no angel either. It would have liked nothing less than to see Linux die before the 2.4 kernel. Now they see that Linux is here to stay and that Solaris is in trouble – unless they try to draw the community to it by open sourcing it. This is an attempt by Sun to become the combined RedHat, Novell, and IBM of the Solaris world. A “benevolant” gatekeeper to the OS.
The fact is that all of these corporations will do anything they see in their best interest. They aren’t working for truth. They aren’t working for free software. They are working for money and their own survival. There is nothing wrong with that, we just have to see it for what it is.
Now, there are new corporations that aren’t like that. Companies like Cononical (which sponsors the Ubuntu distribution) which clearly say that they want all software to be free. RedHat also likes free software, but unlike Canonical who says that they will never make a version that is paid and a version that is free, RedHat has their enterprise version that should be paid for. Canonical embodies the vision of Bradley Kuhn (head of the free software foundation) – that software should be FREE and that individuals and corporations can make money by servicing and supporting that software as Canonical intends to. Personally, I work by creating additions to OSS. It’s not a completely out there idea. Granted, I’m a college student, but still.
We need to make sure that we are choosing our heros not simply because they are convienent (ie. Linux is in their interest), but that they actually believe in the free-software philosophy. Corporations like Novell, Sun, and IBM can be a great help to us, but we have to make sure that they’re not just using us to our downfall. Frankly, I’m really enthused about OpenSolaris. It’s not that I don’t think Linux is great – it is. It’s a stable operating system that is ready for the desktops of most people reading this post and will be ready for the mainstream soon. Of course, opening Solaris can only help Linux from a free software perspective since pieces of Solaris could then be used in Linux where they are superior and it could help Solaris become better as pieces of Linux could be used in it. This is what is great about free software. It can play to our collective strengths, but some don’t want that. Some people are the big cheese in Linux and an open Solaris means that their power becomed diluted.
“I think Solaris, and Windows and other proprietary operating systems should continue/stay in closed source of their operating system and patent their new features to not allow opensource operating systems community take their ideas.”
Fair enough, so long as they don’t try to patent mouse cursors or something.
“Patents are the only great thing that man created, because they garantee the research of new ideas, and don’t allow other people to copy them without authorization of the owner of the patent.”
Sorry, but that’s not the case. I would say Concorde, and the Space Shuttle, and possibly cars or computers are the greatest things we’ve created. Patents don’t quite measure up.
They don’t guarantee the research of anything – they’re only likely to stifle new research because it may be already partly patented.
And they don’t actually prevent other people from copying things very well; it costs so much to get and enforce a patent that a single person is almost certainly not going to be able to enfore it if Microsoft choose to violate it.
“PATENT’s protect programmers for spend their time/work ( could be lots of years) doing a software from being copied.”
No, they don’t. They protect the wallet of the company that employed them that holds the patent.
“Software is like a book, if you copy a book no author will be interested in write a book because there would be no profit. No author would like to spend years writing something for free. No research, no new ideas, and so on..”
Interesting point, but there’s a big difference there. You can very easily copy software, and it’s identical to the original. You cannot easily copy a book; you’d have to retype the whole thing, and reprint it. Easier just to buy it really.
Anyone claiming that Sun can’t open source Solaris is clearly forgetting about 4.4 BSD-Lite, which formed the basis for 386BSD and eventually FreeBSD. 4.4 BSD-Lite is the USL “blessed” version of 4.4 BSD Net/2, the first fully open source version of BSD which was originally based on the Unix Time-Sharing System, which was, of course, owned by USL and sparked a lawsuit. The BSD developers simply reimplemented all of the original Unix sources under a BSD license, and following a bit of litigation the result was 4.4 BSD-Lite, a version of BSD considered completely free of Unix sources by USL themselves.
Sun has made it very clear that Open Solaris will not contain code copyrighted by others and likely they will simply follow the route of 4.4 BSD-Lite, removing all code they don’t hold a copyright on and reimplementing it themselves under an open source license. Will it spark a lawsuit? Probably. Will it be any more substantial than SCO’s lawsuit against Linux? Certainly not… however Sun is also offering legal indemnification for users of Open Solaris, so who cares if it sparks a lawsuit, honestly?
i mean, i’m realizing the impact of patents in the near future IT scenario is not positive
in the sense that only SW houses will afford to keep developing new solutions implementing ideas someone else has already had and patented (and it seems millions of patents have already been granted for as many combinations of IT- related words, or an IT – implementation of known ideas, even silly ones)
yes, volunteers and organizations interested in open source software (“free” software) solutions, may license those patents for symbolic royalties… but anyway credit will have to be given to the patent owner
the headache will come when one has to browse DB’s of millions of patents to search for the concepts he/she is willing to implement, thus to identify the owner of an already granted patent …
Especially when you consider Novell may be on the brink to pressure SUN into protecting Linux instead of harming it either thru direct action or inaction.
SUN has been planning their next move very carefully and it would be quite the blow if Novell says ‘no’, interupting SUN’s carefully laid plans. I wonder if they took this into account or if this situation kinda snuck up on them?
But all I can say is…
OUCH!!!
//I’m a president of one software company.
lucky you then 😉 (no sarcasm)
“Sun is also offering legal indemnification for users of Open Solaris, so who cares if it sparks a lawsuit, honestly?”
all I see is PR. no open source license. no indemnification and solaris is based on SYSV code which is owned by Novell unlike sun os which is bsd based. so they have the complete right to protect their code. if they want to open source solaris they will have rewrite it completely to remove all sysv code owned by novell and maybe sco too.. so certainly not easy and poses legal problems…
“Bradley Kuhn (head of the free software foundation) – that software should be FREE”
fsf has always insisted on software which is free as in freedom not price. redhat is free as in freedom too. so no conflicts there. you guys always get confused with the different meanings of the english word “free”.
Maybe this is Novells way of saying Novell Linux Desktop 9 sucks.
“Patents are the only great thing that man created, because they garantee the research of new ideas,”
Although I’m not against all forms of patents I am against software patents. The main reason is becuase from all the evidence I’ve seen the hinder progress.
Just to go off what was said here I think patents actually slow down the progress of new ideas mainly because companies are patenting such broad things (i.e. the double-click that Microsoft was granted a patent for when dealing with embedded operating systems) that you can’t really avoid using them to create new ideas.
I don’t remember the name of the company (hopefully someone here can point it out) but they were granted a patent on all international sale dealing of networks (namely the Internet). So this patent (if it was actualy enforcable) would single handely destroy any other reasearch into things dealing with international sales reguarding networks.
Let’s also take Eolas’ patent on software plug-ins. What did this end up accomplishing? Nothing so far but it could have stopped any software manufacturer from including the ability to use plug-ins in their software. That would really destroy a lot of features (many of which would be considered new and innovative ideas) from coming to light.
Although I thinkg software patents should be abolished all together I would even be happy with a shorter limit on how long a software patent is good for. We all know that five years in software time is similar to a couple decades in normal time. So it would be rather nice to see software patents exspier after say five years.
“Software is like a book, if you copy a book no author will be interested in write a book because there would be no profit. No author would like to spend years writing something for free. No research, no new ideas, and so on.. ”
I find that you’re both right and wrong on this statement. Writing software is like writing a book so to speak. Just because somebody can’t see a profit from their book or software doesn’t mean they won’t write it. There are a ton of people out there writing books and software just for fun.
Another thing is comparing software patents with a book is rather dicey at best. With a book your can copyright the material, characters, ect. But unlike software patents you can’t go and copyright or patent a particular format you use in your book (paragraphcs, page numbers, table of contencts, ect.) or the exact lines in the book (things such as “Character X noticed Character Y over in the distance”). If this was allowed nobody could write anything because it would infringe on something another person had alread done. This is how software patents are making the world of software development. It’s getting hard to write a program without it clashing with some broad patent held by some mega corperation. Anyhow this is just my views on the subject.
Speaking of which I do have something to say about the specific topic at hand here. Right now Novell is trying to show how much they supposedly love open source. A good way they could show some love to the open source community is to allows Sun to open source Solaris without making them worry about patent infringement lawsuits. But I guess Novell is just going to say open source is only good so long as it benefits us. I know this is what most of corperations are thinking (IBM, Sun, ect.) but at least they are trying to make it appear as if they like open source for everything.
It seems only right after the flamboyant rantings from the Sun camp recently.
Thumbs up to Novell.
So, Novell is not excused from dirty tactics. What a bunch of hypocrites! You can’t compete with them, launch the lawyers!
Not True. Please show me one official sun press release that has proven to be false.
Sun paid big bucks for the rights to the sys V code in Solaris, and besides, A HUGE portion of Solaris code is already open source (BSD).
Sun said they will choose an open source certified license.
Please now, lets not make assumptions.
Novell is throwing out all these statements and are confusing a lot of people.
I think that since SCO has backed down from possible litigation against Sun over the issue and Novell has backed down from copyright claims over UNIX there should not be much to worry about. I’m dissapointed that Novell is putting out all these statements.
I think Novell is just trying to damper SUNW’s stock rise. It’s bad business tactics but everybody does it it seems
The last thing Novell should be doing at this time is creating any possible public relations issues. They have a mighty full plate attempting to push their new products. Drawing the ire of the media or the public NOW, would be suicide.
“It seems only right after the flamboyant rantings from the Sun camp recently.
Thumbs up to Novell.”
Let me guess: You are probably one of the same people who made SCO out to be the bad guy when they tried to sue Linux for patent infringement. But now that it is happening to Sun, suddenly Novell is the good guy for doing the same thing that SCO did. I love the double standard of the Linux freaks.
But Sun will open source Solaris. And this little tactic by Novell is only proof that Linux vendors do see OpenSolaris as a threat to Linux.
Novell is a chameleon in the open source world. They are an enemy disguised as a friend. They have taken and taken and have refused to contribute anything to the open source world. Where is their open source directory service? What exactly have they contributed to the open source world? Nothing but good can come out of Solaris being open sourced. It is a victory for free software, and marks the beginning of many more proprietary technologies going opensource. It is rather ironic that Novell, which was saved by open source software, is fighting this trend. I call everyone to boycot Novell and SuSe. Shame on them for this. Shame on them for keeping their directory services closed source.
A most excellent post with very good points!
What has Novell given to the open source world? Nothing. All they have done is take. And now when another company tries to give something to the open source world? Novell threatens to sue them to block it! Yes, Novell is so open source friendly…
Is that why Sun is seeking developers for Open Solaris, ask Ben Rockwood of http://www.cuddletech.com (he is one of the Open Solaris developers). I am sure there were a number of “pooh-poohers” and “nay-sayers” that thought Linux would go nowhere too back in the day.
Do you think Sun is stupid enough to open itself up to litigation over including System 5 components into Open Solaris? That is why X.org is being used over the traditional Xsun as the X Server for Solaris 10 (starting with Build 69)for example. And more than likely the Java Desktop System (JDS) will become the GUI for Open Solaris, replacing the Common Desktop Environment outright.
I think Novell has a reason to be scared, when Sun releases Open Solaris users and companies will be able to choose between Linux distros (with all of their quirks depending on the distribution) or Open Solaris which will more than likely be standards based and fell like Solaris. Training costs will be minimal, and more than likely can be deployed in the same fashion as Solaris is now (through JumpStart, Solaris Flash, etc.).
I see this as good, why does most everybody else see this as a problem. If Linux is truly going to be successful, it will have to beat the competition.
If I understand your point of view, we should do software, writing books, making music just for FUN and don’t make profit this is contrary to human evolution. Following your point of view, you shouldn’t money to exchange, but be voluntaire to do something, and exchange 10 chickens by a cow, get real!
About mouse double-click, doesn’t hardware engineers haven’t others ideas? or they think double-click is the only way to use a mouse? The people that discover double-click issue, could spend years getting this idea, shouldn’t he get profit from that great idea, or should it do it for FUN?
Stop saying that you are against patents like opensource people do, and start to say what alternatives you have in mind to protect programmers ideas/code, without being copied and having their code protected.
CROND
<<Let me guess: You are probably one of the same people who made SCO out to be the bad guy when they tried to sue Linux for patent infringement.>>
Nope. Ofcourse now we all know better. Do you still think they have a case?
<<But now that it is happening to Sun, suddenly Novell is the good guy for doing the same thing that SCO did.>>
Novell is a company
Sun is a company
Red Hat is a company
IBM is a company
They will do whatever is in their power to make more profits. Its just that simple.
<<I love the double standard of the Linux freaks.>>
I love the brash thinking of the Sun zealots. Don’t generalizations hurt?
<<But Sun will open source Solaris.>>
I remember that Sun also contemplated opensourcing Java, yet nothing precipitated. Till I see a license, it means nothing.
<<And this little tactic by Novell is only proof that Linux vendors do see OpenSolaris as a threat to Linux.>>
Intresting since Sun said that OpenSolaris would not impact Linux and the BSDs.
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8982
<QUOTE>Jonathan does not believe that the OpenSolaris will have an impact on BSD’s or Linux’s growth.</QUOTE>
”
Let me guess: You are probably one of the same people who made SCO out to be the bad guy when they tried to sue Linux for patent infringement. But now that it is happening to Sun, suddenly Novell is the good guy for doing the same thing that SCO did. I love the double standard of the Linux freaks.
”
ok. just in case you really didnt know the difference, sco claims that linux guys stole code and litigating . I dont see novell litigating against Sun for this
Linux code is wide open for everyone to see. solaris is not. so there is no proof either way. lets wait and see. why do you need to jump the gun.
ignore the press statements and off shoot comments. whats proven on court if novell gets to court is what counts.
when did litigation by itself become a dirty trick?
This is funny funny stuff.
Novell to sue Sun.
Microsoft to sue Novell over Mono.
Let’s make the Lawyers Rich!
I agree. I don’t think Sun is in any danger of Novell being able to block it. In fact, I think OpenSolaris has been planned in one form or another for several years and that Sun has been gradually removing problematic source code from Solaris. In fact, Solaris has not even identifed itself as UNIX System V since Solaris 7. I suspect most, if not all problematic source code has already been removed.
> Let me guess: You are probably one of the same people who
> made SCO out to be the bad guy when they tried to sue Linux
> for patent infringement. But now that it is happening to Sun,
> suddenly Novell is the good guy for doing the same thing that
> SCO did. I love the double standard of the Linux freaks.
Except that you conveniently ignore one little detail here. Solaris is based
on source code from Sys V. Sun licenced this code from whoever pretending
to be the owner of this code (weither this code is still protectable is another
issue). Consequently it is strongly possible that Solaris is a derivative of
SysV (just go and read the standard Unix Licence which AT&T certified to be
the same for all licensees). The owner of the SysV copyrights (whoever that
is) is consequently free to prevent the open sourcing of Solaris unless Sun
do not release any original SysV code. But it is likely that Solaris contains
such code.
It is very convenienent for you to confuse the issue with the Linux case. But
the difference is that Linux was not made by building on top of SysV, unlike
Solaris. So the situation is totally different.
Since nobody except Sun knows what fragment of SysV remains in Solaris, the
owner of the Unix SysV copyrights can (and should if it does not want to lose
any copyrights pertaining to protectable code) oppose the disclosure of said
code.
Instead of ranting (trolling away?) please, let’s get our facts straight. I believe
you are deliberatly confusing the issues here.
What happen to linux is microsoft opensources it XENIX operating system?
“Intresting since Sun said that OpenSolaris would not impact Linux and the BSDs.”
It won’t impact Linux and BSDs. But you should know Jonathan better than that by now. What he means is that it WILL impact Red Hat and other commercial Linux vendors since Solaris is cheaper. But it will not impact Linux and BSD in general.
“Except that you conveniently ignore one little detail here. Solaris is based on source code from Sys V.”
As I said in another post, I suspect this is not true anymore. I think Sun has been gradually removing Sys V source code from Solaris for years in preperation for open sourcing it. Solaris has not even identified itself as UNIX Sys V since Solaris 7.
Man… I’m starting to believe that you are actually serious here? Please say it ain’t so!
I think people should consider finding out what open source means before starting that same old chant about “nobody is going to make money developing software any more”. I highly recommend Eric Raymonds “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”.
About software patents, there is programmers that don’t do code for FUN, but to make profit, like me for example.
Look here–since you’re supposedly a president of a software company (har har), you should know that most code that is developed commercially is contracted out for specific companies with specific requirements. No “license” will change the profitability for companies writing code in this manner. The employee’s hard-spent time and effort remains protected in this case.
Companies who stake their business model on writing and selling software are doomed, because they cannot provide anything that the FOSS community won’t replicate. FOSS needs the same thing proprietary code needs–a demand. The demand is what brings in developers who share a common need which they collectively fix.
Businesses who stake their business model on either hardware or support (or both) win with FOSS too, because they can add value to whatever service or goods they provide with FOSS software. If it makes sense, they can hire a few programmers to add functionality into the code. Even though this functionality is now made to the world at no charge, other companies cannot add their own functionality and keep it closed, so the playing field is level.
Software-only companies will die. If, indeed, you are the president for a software company (which I don’t actually believe is the case), then I suggest you rethink your business model if your target customers are consumers–if what you are developing is unique, then some of your customers might start developing your competition
Companies like IBM that provide and end-to-end solution that merely see software as a value-addition are the driving financial motive behind OSS. They will MURDER software houses that don’t write on a contract basis.
Does MYSQL commercial version uses MYSQL GPL code? If no, why they are identical? Are they using programmers code that do code for FUN?
Does REDHAT commercial version uses REDHAT GPL code? If no, why they are identical? Are they using programmers code that do code for FUN?
Does X commercial version uses X GPL code? If no, why they are identical? Are they using programmers code that do code for FUN?
I don’t know… up to you to answer to this questions…
I have read Cathedral and Bazaar. And unlike the open source advocates, I don’t take everything that comes out of the pen of ESR as the gospel according to the computer gods.
In a nutshell, I don’t agree with most of what Raymond says. And if you think open source does NOT take away jobs, tell that to SCO and Sun who have laid off thousands of programmers specifically because of competition from Linux.
Especially when you consider Novell may be on the brink to pressure SUN into protecting Linux instead of harming it either thru direct action or inaction.
It might be strange, but it is just that. Opening Solaris could mean a lot more legal troubles for Linux than anything until now (not saying that Sun would take advatages like that, I don’t want to start love-hate Sun thread again (btw. I hate Sun)).
Few examples:
1. Dev A copies patented code from Solaris and this code gets its way into kernel, You can’t expect that kernel devs would check every piece of code on this planet
2. Dev B creates similiar function as it is patented in Solaris. He would have to prove that he couldn’t have access to Solaris code. Which is hard to prove once code is made available
3. Dev C sees (or does not) proprietary solution and creates its own implementation. Again proving innocence would be hard to do.
Opening the code of Solaris would mean a lot of patented and protected solutions left out in the wild, and it would also mean a lot more rechecking of contributions to Linux.
Agree with symba:)
Why mandrake was to close some years ago if they do opensource code?
Hmmm you ignored the rest of my reply. I guess that makes me right.
<<It won’t impact Linux and BSDs.>>
Um you just said:
<QUOTE>
And this little tactic by Novell is only proof that Linux vendors do see OpenSolaris as a threat to Linux.
</QUOTE>
Simba you make no sense. Why the double talk?
<<But you should know Jonathan better than that by now.>>
No I dont. I’m just a simple student who enjoys reading about the newest technologies. Why can’t Jonathan speak what he means?
——-
<<What he means is that it WILL impact Red Hat and other commercial Linux vendors>>
<<…it will not impact Linux and BSD in general.>>
——-
Im sorry but can you honestly say that without Red Hat, Linux in general would be as popular? RH acted as a catalyst to propel the various Linux distros to widespread acceptance. I myself, am very thankful for RH for bringing Linux into the spotlight.
novell have just demonstrated that their strategy is to
take advantage by cheap workers and GPLed programs
this thing was on air…..
now the fun thing is, mono can loose momentum thanks to this
rumors ?
What i want to get from people that are against software patents is why they are against and what solutions they have to protect programmers/company’s code? But it’s seems hard to them to answer to this question. The only thing that they say is they are against, but don’t know why and what solutions to solve this problem, (if i can call this a problem)….
“In a nutshell, I don’t agree with most of what Raymond says. And if you think open source does NOT take away jobs, tell that to SCO and Sun who have laid off thousands of programmers specifically because of competition from Linux.”
Oh, we ought to feel so bad that these proprietary houses cannot continue to extort huge license fees out of customers because there is a more economical and more effective way to develop software. There is something called capitalism that is at work here. You may want to read on the efficiencies of breaking up a task into specialized subsets and what it does for efficiency.
If you have a well-argued rebuttal to ESR’s “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, why don’t you publish it or are you afraid that you would be laughed off the face of the earth. How convenient to attack others behind the veiled anonymity of the internet? Why don’t you put your name and reputation on the line and offer a real rebuttal?
Oh that would take work and research and it is easier to whine in internet forums. The open source methodology has proven itself and the onus is on you or on anyone who spouts the bullshit you spout.
“Simba you make no sense. Why the double talk?”
What I should have said was that they see OpenSolaris as a threat to commercial Linux. In other words, a thread to their profit streams.
What Jonathan means is that OpenSolaris is not a threat to Linux and BSD in general. Look at BSD. There are no commercial FreeBSD distributions. And yet FreeBSD continues to be an excellent operating system that is upgraded and maintained by enthusistatic volunteers. Much of the work on Linux is done by volunteers as well. Therefore, OpenSolaris is not a threat to Linux or BSD in general. What it is a threat to is Red Hat and commercial Linux.
“Im sorry but can you honestly say that without Red Hat, Linux in general would be as popular?”
Red Hat made Linux popular. But I don’t think the loss of Red Hat would suddenly make Linux unpopular again.
Novell acquirements of SUSE and MONO is a strategic tactic to get attention for other company’s. They wanted to say, we have a linux for enterprise, we like GPL, isn’t it risky for them? Let’s wait for next few years and see if novell programmers aren’t searching for other job…
Where do you see some threat to Linux.
Personally, I wouldn’t touch Solaris with a ten foot pole. And neither would any Linux admin I know. There’s just too much of unknown in proprietary Opensource (and Solaris even if it is Opensource it still is proprietary, because no one can modify its code and can’t make changes, all it can do is watch and suggest to Sun). They can take you everything anytime (mostly that happens when company looses its profits) and you’re f….ed.
p.s. We both know. You love Solaris, I hate Sun. And we both won’t change our opinion if we fall in Sun love-hate-proprietary-nonproprietary thread, so there’s no need to reply
The problems of software patents are well known. Listen to the online lectures of Richard Stallman available through the fsf.org.
Read Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture or Code and other Laws of Cyberspace.
Anyway, I shouldn’t have bothered responding to such an obvious troll such as yourself. Pray tell us, for which software company are you president?
“The problems of software patents are well known. Listen to the online lectures of Richard Stallman available through the fsf.org.”
Even Eric Raymond doesn’t agree with Stallman. And Even Eric Raymon admits that Stallman was probably influenced heavily my Marxism.
Hi would like eugenia to read my posts and say it opinion…
Suppose you are a software company and you want to sell software, the vendor go to a client to sell the software, the client says at final presentation of our software, i like it! it does all what i want! but i can get it for free (opensource GPL).
My question is simple, is that good for software company business? Is that capitalism, or be able to get a salary at the end of the month?
CROND
It’s not like the started open sourcing components to their enterprise networking system or anything. And that time they bought SuSE and then failed to open source their system configuration tool YaST. And then there was that time they told the Mono project to shove it when they asked for Novell to sponsor their work. Then we can’t forget the time that they failed to promise to use their patent portfolio to protect Linux from certain attacks. Not to mention how they lack the business credibility to bring Linux into major competition with Microsoft… it’s not as if they’re designing all their “Nterprise” software to be cross-platform or anything to help Windows shops better migrate to Linux. Not to mention they don’t even use Linux internally, so when businesses ask them what they use they just tell them Microsoft.
— The preceeding message was all sarcasm
“As I said in another post, I suspect this is not true anymore. ”
you wish that. you have no way of knowing conclusively. Sun hasnt confirmed either way.
“It won’t impact Linux and BSDs”
you mean a succesful solaris wont affect linux or solaris?. you are drinking jonathan’s wine here. remember that he is the guy who LIED about redhat being proprietary and not lsb compliant
“And if you think open source does NOT take away jobs, tell that to SCO and Sun who have laid off thousands of programmers specifically because of competition from Linux.”
then how did this happen. competition. whether its open source or not doesnt market. a free market should allow competition. if that means sun loses so be it. stop twisting out that a loser loses due to opensource making it lose jobs. even if linux was proprietary and solaris was losing out to sun the same thing would happen.
learn about free market and competition.
“What Jonathan means is that OpenSolaris is not a threat to Linux and BSD in general. Look at BSD. There are no commercial FreeBSD distributions.”
look. no need to explain jonathan;s lies. there are multiple commercial bsd based operating systems. no need to prove your ignorance here. if there isnt commerical distributions linux definitely would slow down. the market for bsd isnt comparable to linux precisely because commerical distributions like redhat and novell drives the market. it doesnt happen with freebsd because the bsd license doesnt require you to share your modifications and hence people dont contribute back.
“Even Eric Raymond doesn’t agree with Stallman. And Even Eric Raymon admits that Stallman was probably influenced heavily my Marxism.
”
where did he say that?. did you know they are still very close people and ESR very much respects RMS. he calls open source a marketing for free software in opensource.org. you better learn things again
<<What I should have said was that they see OpenSolaris as a threat to commercial Linux. In other words, a thread to their profit streams.>>
Sun already made the comment that:
OpenSolaris is to Solaris
as
FedoraCore is to RHEL/RHAS/etc
Theres no profit, this is all about migrating developers to aid in improving Solaris. Hmmm but didnt you say…
<QUOTE>
And if you think open source does NOT take away jobs, tell that to SCO and Sun who have laid off thousands of programmers specifically because of competition from Linux.
</QUOTE>
I’ve spoken to you before and this theme keeps on reoccuring. You seem to dislike OSS since it takes away jobs but now you defend Sun as they are trying to tap into the resources of the OSS community to build up their products.
Sounds like hypocritcy to me.
<< Look at BSD. There are no commercial FreeBSD distributions.>>
This is a failing of the BSD community. In Linux, I can name quite a handful of commerical distros.
-RH
-SUSE
-MDK
-Xandros
-Linspire
-Linare
-etc…
<<Much of the work on Linux is done by volunteers as well. Therefore, OpenSolaris is not a threat to Linux or BSD in general.>>
You try to validate your point by asumming that the Linux ecosystem is the same as the BSDs, this is simply not true as I have just pointed out.
<<Red Hat made Linux popular. But I don’t think the loss of Red Hat would suddenly make Linux unpopular again.>>
This logic might be true if things were static. Users/ISVs come and go, Linux is succeeding because of its immense momentum. Take away RH, and you will hurt the Linux community.
@somebody (IP: —.my.dirtydog.no)
Thanks
“Suppose you are a software company and you want to sell software, the vendor go to a client to sell the software, the client says at final presentation of our software, i like it! it does all what i want! but i can get it for free (opensource GPL).
My question is simple, is that good for software company business? Is that capitalism, or be able to get a salary at the end of the month?”
Ok, I’m not entirely sure about that last sentence (ESL I’m guessing), but here it goes anyway. Yes, that would be capitolism, the client has a choice and makes a choice. Taking that choice away would not be capitolism, it’s been a while since my High-School Government/Economics class, but I think that would be socialism. And capitolism does not guarantee a salary.
Everyone take a deep breath, first of all, it doesnt say anything about Novell trying to stop sun open sourcing Solaris, it says that they’re interested in what license sun chooses, hell I’m interested in what license sun will choose, who isn’t?
Secondly, This was written by Maureen O’Gara, she wouldnt know accurate reporting if it hit her in the face. If she can spin a story, or outright lie to damage linux, she will.
I hope this is merely FUD. As others have pointed out, OpenSolaris is only goodness for consumers of operating systems — so I hope for the sake of both companies (and for the sake of both the Solaris community and for the open source community more generally) that Novell doesn’t try to litigate this. From my contacts within Sun, I can say Sun is very, very serious about OpenSolaris; Novell will lose any attempt to stop OpenSolaris, but in the process they will exacerbate the divisive atmosphere surrounding platform choice.
That said, I don’t think that Novell will try to stop this. Unlike SCO, Novell actually has product generating revenue; they can’t afford to antagonize customers arbitrarily. I trust that Novell will back off as soon as they figure out that (a) they have no case and (b) that Sun will stop at nothing to win. May they figure this out sooner rather than later…
Softwarepatents and patents in general are a BAD THING (TM)!
Get used to it, i don’t care if current society needs them.
Imagine a car maker who had to pay royalties to some obscure
organisation which owns the patent to the shape of a wheel.Imagine how it would influence all manufacturing and life in general if there would be such a patent. Now think about the Pharmaindustry which “invents” new drugs to fight diseases. Sure they invest massive amounts of money into research, but what about the so called orphan diseases where it isn`t rewarding enough to research in? Why not letting the universities do this stuff alone? What worth to society had the patent to VIOXX? And why the F..k not opensourcing Microsoft Windows? In a more ideal world the company which would supply the best and most efficient code to adhere to some common standard would win. In the world we have now, quality doesn’t count, marketing and ruthlessness does. Oh i’ve forgotten the lawyers. There is technically nothing speaking against ONE universal Softwarestandard which would enable you to install shrinkwrapped software on any hardwareplatform with whichever CPU, BUS, Architecture, Operatingsystem and whatnot else. Don’t say this isn’t possible, there have been large amounts of money poured into research of these things, only to go down the drain, because
of MARKETS which have been PROTECTED by PATENTS. To name a few, Smalltalk/80 from the Xerox PARC is one solution, another is the ANDF, the so called Architecture Neutral Distribution Format, not the mention the concepts of virtual
machines like JAVA, anybody remembers FORTH btw.? So what we have now is a situtation with a digital babylon on one side, where some “nonstandard” solution is choosen because the functionality it provides is absolutely necessary, but not affordable to the general masses, and a debile pseudostandard on the other side which is like speaking the most ugly redneck/hillybilly slang, and forcing you to do that on the least efficient hardware which nowadays reminds me of steam-engines because of the cooling it needs. Is it cheap? Sure! Is it worth it’s price? No! Do i have another choice which would be financially feasible? No! Why? PATENTS!
And now wake up!
This really shows *how* much Sun really cares about Linux and open source software. They’d rather release their proprietary Solaris (or variant of) than a Linux version. That speaks volumes. As i’ve said many times in the past – Sun are not to be trusted and are not true players in the Open Source arena.
Dave W Pastern
There are no commercial FreeBSD distributions.
HawkinsOS
TrianceOS
Commercial GNU/Linux is not a problem, as long as they abide the GPL. Atleast for me.
Enough said… That’s what open source software is all about. Socialism. Great in theory. Never works in practice because without the ability to capitalize on inovation, no one will inovate.
Some countries in Europe are socialist and doing fine. You can capitalize (make money) off of free(libre) software: Red Hat, SUSE, Gentoo, and the Free Software Foundation have done this.
Some people are so great in doing this, they put an entire industry on notice, Redhat a product based off of largely free as to obtain, and free as in libre software; has done to the UNIX server industry. If you go to LKML.org or read the change logs between kernel releases, there is much innovation — more so it seems in socialist branded libre software, than in the more traditional capitalist behemoth Microsoft.
The Soviet Union, a communist country. Managed to send a man in outer space, and launch a satellite before the capitalist oriented United States — quite an achievement for people who don’t innovate.
OK- Karl Marx presented a lot of good information. The Soviets took some of his ideas and twisted it–no they did not follow Marx’s view of communism. No one has followed what Marx has visioned. So comparing any of the so-called communist countries to what marx said is irrelevant.
Comparing Open Source to the soviet union is irrelevant. However, it may be some truth when comparing it to what marx invisioned.
People twist things up so bad.. It would be better not even to bring communism into the arguement anyway
Whoops sorry about that. The only one I knew was HawkinsOS but I thought they went out of business a little while ago…guess I was wrong.
>>Everyone take a deep breath, first of all, it doesnt say anything about Novell trying to stop sun open sourcing Solaris, it says that they’re interested in what license sun chooses, hell I’m interested in what license sun will choose, who isn’t?<<
..but framing it as “Novell May Try To Stop OpenSolaris” makes for such a juicy bit of troll bait, Eugenia couldn’t wait to post it.
“Whoops sorry about that. The only one I knew was HawkinsOS but I thought they went out of business a little while ago…guess I was wrong.
”
the problem is they dont have to contribute back anything at all. they simply rip off bsd code and add proprietary stuff. noone knows and talks about that. esp bsd people
I am a partner of a software company. And an artist.
Ideas (either software or book plots) are not patentable (except in US), neither they should be made to be.
If one could patent ideas (as you say) there would be (for example) no music and no visual arts, because somebody would have patented the idea of a note and a scheme of putting those notes one after each other (called “playing” the “music”). And someone would have patented idea of putting colored dabs near each other, “to emulate a real or imagined view”. There would be nothing if someone would have patented the most common ideas other solutions are build upon.
Did you know that showing images rapidly on screen is also patented? Do you pay roayalties? Why don’t you? Are you a commie?
Software firms make money by applying ideas to specific problem and their code (implementation of that idea) is protected by COPYRIGHT! As are paintings and books.
My poem about flowers is protected by copyright, but that shouldn’t stop others from writing poems about flowers.
If some other company wants to compete they do their own implementation of some idea which is either worse or better than yours. If it is better, you may lose. I see just “capitalism in action” here, no commies at all. You seem to want monopoly forever, even if your product is inferior by implementation. Is it?
Real-world inventions, OTOH, are patentable, and they will stay so. Because they are physical inventions with tens of years of research, not loose ideas grabbed and modified from common knowledge over a pint.
Did I make myself perfectly clear?
“What i want to get from people that are against software patents is why they are against and what solutions they have to protect programmers/company’s code? But it’s seems hard to them to answer to this question. The only thing that they say is they are against, but don’t know why and what solutions to solve this problem, (if i can call this a problem)….”
I think I already stated, quite clearly, why I’m agasint software patents. They slow down any real innovation in the software industry.
Here is an example. Lets say programmer X has a great idea for something he wants to write. Its an amazing piece of technology that could revolutionize the way people do business online.
But this new program infringes on a broad patent held by the Tri-Optimum corperation. This patent covers all business transactions done online. What does this mean? It means that any company who wants to make software that deals with online business has to license this patent. But Tri-Optimum doesn’t want any competition in the field so they just refuse to license the technology and keep an iron grip on their monopoly.
So programmer X can no longer make this inovative an revolutionary product becasue some company went an patented a very broad idea dealing with software.
I’m sure you’er going to say that is a good thing because Tri-Optimum thought up the idea of online business first. But again lets put this into a different perspective. Lets say completly generic person Y patents a way of posting information onto a message board that is located online. Now lets say you want to make a website with a message board for the public to post to.
Well you won’t be able to unless you license completly generic person Y’s technology. But once agaion competely generic person Y doesn’t want any competition in the field (he wants his web page to be the only web page with a message board) so he just refuses to license this idea to you. There you sit unable to create a simple message board (like the one your posting on now) simply because some person put a patent on the idea.
When you are patenting software you are patenting a generic idea, something that is nothing more then writing in a specific lanugage. Just imagine if somebody could patent phrases in the English languages like “Hello, how are you doing?” or “What time is it?” You would quickly run out of ways to communicate without paying fees to people who patented the idea of basic conversation.
“Suppose you are a software company and you want to sell software, the vendor go to a client to sell the software, the client says at final presentation of our software, i like it! it does all what i want! but i can get it for free (opensource GPL).
My question is simple, is that good for software company business? Is that capitalism, or be able to get a salary at the end of the month?”
It’s perfectly fine for the software company if the software company diversifies it’s business into things such as support. Your saying that open source software will destroy your business. But in all honesty the only way your business would die is if all you had was software, and if all you have is one product then you are doomed to fail from the get go.
Take General Electic for instance. They have their hands in more things then you could imagine. They do this, not only to make more money, but also for stability reasons. If the market falls out of any particular form of business they can just drop that section of the company and consentrate more on the thousands of other products they sell.
Then look at somebody like IBM, the only reason they are still around is because they decided to change business practices when one of their forms of busieness were dying (in this case their typewritter line). When things started going downhill for their typewritters then went and invested in making personal computers. Eventually there were a ton of other companies who made clones of their machines at a much cheaper rate. Did IBM die? No they simply started doing more business in servers and consulting to make up for the smaller number of computers they were selling.
Now of course if you don’t diversify your products there is another option. You have to devliver a product that is noticable better then your competition (in this case open source software). Lets say you have a piece of software that your selling for $50.00 but there is a similar open source solution for free. What can you do? Make your product better, so much better that it actually has enough added value to be worth paying for.
This is what automobile companies do. There are a ton of companies that sell cars and some companies have much more expensive cars then the others. But these companies don’t die off because they have a product that people are willing to pay more for. Sure you could get a basic car that got you from point A to point B just fine. But if you pay extra you can get a car that does that as well as some added luxeries such as a faster engine, better stereo, more comfortable seats, ect. The only reason your piece of software would die when going against the open source equivalant is because it is either the same thing or its not as good.
Its called competition and that is what capitalism is based on. You’re pretty much stating that you want no competition form the open source community, so in the end you want sole power over the market. Well if you want that try to strike a deal with a dictatorship that will make it a law that only your product will be saleable. Otherwise learn to adapt like your are suppose to in a capitalist nation.
Thanks for putting Crond straight about Copywrite and Patents. I have come to the site late for this discussion (Timezones), and it was frustrating reading all his GOOD arguments for copywrite protection with the word patent incorrectly substituted.
Thanks again
Everyone take a deep breath, first of all, it doesnt say anything about Novell trying to stop sun open sourcing Solaris, it says that they’re interested in what license sun chooses, hell I’m interested in what license sun will choose, who isn’t?
Secondly, This was written by Maureen O’Gara, she wouldnt know accurate reporting if it hit her in the face. If she can spin a story, or outright lie to damage linux, she will.
Most sensible comment in this news. As soon as I saw O’Gara’s photo on the foot of the article, I just knew the headline was bull.
Really, that woman is the most sensationalist, biased monster to ever write about technology news on internet. Discarding people working in big software companies, of course.
@Adam:
Some countries in Europe are socialist and doing fine.
Erm, can you name a socialist country in Europe? Do you actually have any idea what socialism means??
—-
Anyway, it seems more than obvious to me that Novell is getting scared because of Sun possibly open-sourcing Solaris. And they should be, since there’s no reason to believe that Solaris is inferior to Linux. Novell has invested quite a lot into Linux, and now they see a competitor on the horizon. This once again shows that the so-called “open-source-loving” companies are just that– companies. They want to make money– and having competitors means that they will make less money. As simple as that.
No harm in that though; it’s the way companies work and it makes all the sense to me. It’s just kind of sad to see the world of so many OSS zealots break into pieces…
It looks like Novell is the same bunch of scumbags as SCO. They are waving the Linux flags but at the same time blocking attempts to give more Open Source software to the people (just like IBM). Sun is the real friend of OSS, not Novell or IBM!
Softwaer patents, in fact, KILL innovation…
patents arn’t given to these unique, one-company only ideas, they are given to bland, generic, common ideas.
Amazon, for instance, has a patent that basicly says ‘we save customer’s payment information on a computer, so when they click the BUY button, they don’t have to type it in’… Now, yes, that is a great feature. HOWEVER, it is obvious, common practice, and non-innovative. NOW, every company that has similar functionality (iTunes Music Store, for one) has to lease the patent from Amazon. Apple has the money to do this, other smaller companies do not.
Patents give exclusive rights to a concept in such a generic, obvious way that no software company, even yours, can write any significant software without infringing on another (normally a large corp) patent. You, as a presidcent, have to either have enough company money to license the patent OR hope that particular company doesn’t sue you.
Patents hinder innovation. They give power to corporations, giving them an unfair advantage in the way of potential lawsuits to all other companies that infringe on them. Patents, and IP, are the downfall of the market.
Patents and IP, break the free market. They break the even playing field that lets small companies create competitive products to large companies.
“What i want to get from people that are against software patents is why they are against and what solutions they have to protect programmers/company’s code?”
OFCOURSE I am not against it. That would be silly. A company can make and sell a product as they wish. This has never been in question. This, also, has nothing to do with software patents.
What patents do is give a generic concept of product A owned by company A, the abiltiy to sue company X.Y and Z over their products because of a similar feature(wether it be specific, generic, or the natural evolution of the product’s ability)
Protecting code, is NOT protecting the concept that code is doing. Simply put: There are many great ideas out there, most of them, are not original. Quite honestly, ideas today are LARGELY based off the ‘shoulders of giants’, combining 2 features, attacking a new problem in an old way, etc. Very little ‘TRUE’ innovation happens, development is almost 100% EVOLUTION today. Patents give 1 person exclusive rights overa concept that would CLEARLY be reached by others in many cases.
It is not a question of a company being able to protect themselves or being able to protect their code. Patents don’t do that. They DON’T. They just create a means to sue a company that has a similar concept or feature in their product.
I don’t have a problem with patents that are very specific, very original, and truly non-obvious and have no prior art. Almost no software patents fit these criteria, which by the book, shouldn’t give them the patent.
PS: A mechanical patent use to require detailed schematics and plans on the product, it use to be very narrow and specific. If software patents turned in the source code used to derive the patent(for USPTO’s eyes only for the length of the patent) that would be public domained at the end of the patent. Along with, again, non-obvious, no prior art and specific. I wouldn’t mind them nearly as much.
They state patents are in today. They STIFFLE competition because small companies cannot create a simlar product without infringing on a lareger companies patents.
“They are waving the Linux flags but at the same time blocking attempts to give more Open Source software to the people (just like IBM). Sun is the real friend of OSS, not Novell or IBM!”
Novell didnt litigate unlike sco and sun also hasnt released open solaris yet. they also refuse to open up or standardise java under ECMA or ISO. tell me again how is sun different from ibm or novell
> tell me again how is sun different from ibm or novell
Sun gave more software to open source than IBM and Novell combined. Sun actually does something instead of just waving the flag and feeding off comunitiy efforts like IBM and Novell. IBM and Novell are both more about propaganda than actually giving something to OSS — if they gave something back to OSS, that is either some irrelevant roadkill (Cloudscape) or reactive effort to steal the spotlight from Sun (Eclipse).
I just couldn’t resist…
By David Pastern (IP: —.swiftdsl.com.au) – Posted on 2004-11-28 00:02:55
This really shows *how* much Sun really cares about Linux and open source software. They’d rather release their proprietary Solaris (or variant of) than a Linux version. That speaks volumes. As i’ve said many times in the past – Sun are not to be trusted and are not true players in the Open Source arena.
Dave W Pastern
You know, I thought I would answer this poster, explain that Linux is not the only opensourced OS, and that just because someone does not work on Linux specifically, does not mean he does not contribute to opensource in other ways. I thought I’d explain that releasing an os that is not Linux, as opensource, counts just as much, if not more, as a contribution. More, because it has been developed in house for many years and at huge expenses. More, because creating a Linux distro does not include much of your own code and contribution, unlike unveiling the totality of the code you developed for an OS. Taking the Linux kernel and userland and creating a distro can’t compare to developing and releasing a complete and different OS. I also thought it would be useful if I explained that for Sun, it makes more sense to develop and release the source of Solaris, as they have much more expertise in it than in Linux, and they also intend to continue to use Solaris as the preferred OS for the mid-to-highend servers (because of better scalability, manageability, storage and filesystem support etc.)
But then I realized that this stuff is so obvious even a hamster with a headache would understand it. I have to wonder: what’s wrong with this poster, how could he write such nonsense?
”
Sun gave more software to open source than IBM and Novell combined. ”
thats a bold claim. everytime I hear it I ask this
——
tell me how sun contributed more. what code stastics do you have. list every sun, novell, ibm and redhat contribution and tell me how SUN does it more or how you got that idea?
—–
nobody has done it before. will you do it instead of just repeating Jonathan lies like redhat is proprietary and not LSB compliant and that they contributed more . dont just list Sun contributions. I want you to compare on the whole
Funny humans would put money before the importance of life!
Sun is going to open source Solaris and effectively claim a giant patent space, including all of UNIX and all of Linux.
Sun is doing this at Microsoft’s behest.
Novell is wise to the game, and is playing tough.
After all, the real war, the endless war, is Microsoft vs. Novell.
I am glad Novell is not dumb and they are fighting on the extended front.
And I wish them good luck.
NFS
OpenOffice
Project Looking Glass
Contributions to JXTA
Massive contribution to Gnome (expensive, too)
Contributions to NetBeans
WOW! Novell to take over as SCO jr.
After all we’d hate to have another realistic alternative to linux sink Novell’s (hype) boat yet again. (Especially since we all know that if one of the big boys with a FULLY accredited UNIX releases the source(plus undoubted Java support), linux is pushed towards oblivion, especially if other big boys e.g. SGI also happened to release something like, say, Indigo Magic…)
“About mouse double-click, doesn’t hardware engineers haven’t others ideas? or they think double-click is the only way to use a mouse? The people that discover double-click issue, could spend years getting this idea, shouldn’t he get profit from that great idea, or should it do it for FUN?”
Actually, the mouse double-click originated in a government funded research facility, as have a lot of the fundamental principles behind computer GUIs. Why should these people who have already been paid to potter around with their pet project then also get paid from licensees, and if the government were to get the royalties from something like this, do you seriously think they’d lower taxes because of the windfall?
“Stop saying that you are against patents like opensource people do, and start to say what alternatives you have in mind to protect programmers ideas/code, without being copied and having their code protected.”
I’m an open source person, and I don’t believe that patents are fundamentally bad, their original purpose was to allow inventors to publish details of their invention without fear of someone pirating it before they could find an investor or buyer for their invention.
The problems with patents are simply that they last too long, and the trend is that people in business are looking to use them as a weapon to hold back the pace of progress. Imaagine if the current patent process had been invented 1000 years ago and the patents were held in perpetuity. We’d have to be very careful about everything we did for fear that some patent holder would come along and demand royalties for using their cobblestone design.
Think how much worse it would get if instead of patenting the cobblestone, the company were able to patent the idea of laying cobblestones edge to edge, and you begin to see why sofware idea patents are beginning to look frightening to developers. They don’t apply just to an invention [a computer algorithm], but to the general idea, rather than a specific implementation.
In the world of computer software where there are few barriers to setting up a company to commercialise an invention, and the pace of development is very rapid, the period of patent protection should be considerably shorter. Otherwise developing software will be like having to navigate through a minefield of patents, some of which apply to concepts that have been obsoleted, and have been dusted off and polished to sound like they apply to something else. Patent battles about hyperlinking and object embedding spring to mind.
If you truly are the president of a software company, then you should be working hard to build an arsenal of patents, because if you don’t and the world turns out the way you want, you’re going to be fighting against the big boys who want you to pay royalties for using the alphabet to display information.
tell me how sun contributed more. what code stastics do you have. list every sun, novell, ibm and redhat contribution and tell me how SUN does it more or how you got that idea?
I guess there is this thing called a search engine, use it and the answer shall be yours.
Read this for a chronology of how Sun was founded and on what principles.
http://www.wordesign.com/unix/chronology_of_the_unix_world.htm
Then read this for a list of contributions
http://www.sunsource.net/
Look at suns contribution to the gnome project.
http://foundation.gnome.org/
openoffice.org
NFS/NFSv4
http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/nfsv4/
The NFSv4 opensource implementation is sponsored by Sun.
NetBeans
I guess most of you haven’t RTFA. It says nothing about Novell trying to stop Sun from opening Solaris up through litigation. It is just an O’Gara gossip piece. Heck she even mentions that Sun and SCO are good buddies! Nothing concrete. Just rumour-mongering and twisting of words. BTW, since some of you appear to be living a couple of months in the future, Open Solaris is not a reality yet. That is true. When Sun has choosen an open source license for OpenSolaris, then we will see just how open it is.
nobody has done it before. will you do it instead of just repeating Jonathan lies like redhat is proprietary and not LSB compliant and that they contributed more . dont just list Sun contributions. I want you to compare on the whole
Why don’t you do the excercise? Since you disagree the onus is on you to provr that IBM and Novell have contributed more to the Opensource community than Sun.
Let’s look at it another way. What have Redhat, IBM and Novell contributed to the community on the whole not just linux? Remember linux is not the open source community.
Sun has contributed NFS, Openoffice , Gnome and event to SPARC. These contributions truly benifit the entire OSS community and not just linux. IBM, Novell and REdhat contribute maninly to the linux community. There in lies a huge difference. I am not counting all of Novell and redhat’s corporate purchases like Ximian and Cygnus.
As far as contribution go prove that Redhat, IBM and Novell have individually contributed more to OS agnostic OSS projects than Sun.
I think since Novell has found a new Open Source philosophy they shouldnt be scared of an OpenSolaris. If Novell tries this, that will mean they are no better than SCO and how can the Open Source community then be so enamored to the idea that Novell will actually use their patents to protect them, as Novell has claimed, and not use the patents as a battle weapon should someone create a better version of a software package then they do. I very much dislike novell, they abandoned the Netware users and this news just reminds me why i dislike them.
Talking about contributions, well someone said show us what Sun does so we can see it is larger than IBM and others…
Well you showed Sun, I will show IBM’s http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/views/opensource/projects.jsp… Developer Works OSS Projects.
I really don’t care whether Sun opens Solaris fully or not as long as they offer it “free” in terms of $$$ and reasonable licensing/support options.
Could we just be getting a glimpse into how Novell is going to behave in the future?
I would imagine it’s safe to say that Sun owns a pretty good chunk of the code in Solaris. All of it? I’d also venture to say they’ve gone over the code from top to bottom several times and have figured out what is theirs and what code might be someone else’s IP. How they deal with that in licensing, that will be interesting.
I’d imagine SUN has a plan being “fine tuned” right now on how they are going to go about it. Been a lot of talk from SUN over the years, but they seem deadly serious about what they want to do with Solaris now. We’ll see if they deliver, deliver sort of, or it was just all talk.
Nothing says they can’t just “buy” the IP of what isn’t theirs or make some other kind of settlement. Sun’s stock may not be that great (coming back up lately), but they got a big wad of cash in the bank!!! They’ve got the cash to go shopping or pay the lawyers with 🙂
Will Novell’s claims to UNIX IP hold up? DO they really want to battle this out with SUN and possibly give SCO an opening to peak into the related discovery documents? Novell (and Sun) would do well to think long and hard about how nasty they want to be over this.
Novell vs Sun lawsuit over UNIX IP in Solaris, go for it, really will not matter that much, get it out of the way Novell. Folks chewing over this, might do well to learn the history of BSD (and it’s legal battles years ago) as Solaris is basically a commercialized variant of BSD. With the demise of HP-UX and AIX, you could say that Solaris is probably the last remaining unix OS out there (probably should count SCO’s unix…eh, screw ’em). Yeah, I know the difference between “UNIX” and unix, we don’t need a lecture on that dead horse topic 😉 Back on topic, if there has to be a legal battle over this to clear the road ahead for Solaris, go for it and get it over with.
Software patents are a looming nightmare, does your OS provider offer you protection? Not something you can ignore anymore if you do any “business” involving software/OS’es.
I’d say the next 5-10 years of software IP and operating systems is going to be one wild ride at times!
Words are cheap in business, actions count. How does your vendor behave?
JT
That list would be impressive, until you discover that most entries appear in more than one category. Jikes, for example, occurs under Linux, Java and Opensource (?). Then you discover that most of the contributions are for IBM-specific software or hardware, and are not used very much outside of that realm.
JFS seems to be the only truly important contribution that really benefits more than just IBM. That ain’t much.
“Suppose you are a software company and you want to sell software, the vendor go to a client to sell the software, the client says at final presentation of our software, i like it! it does all what i want! but i can get it for free (opensource GPL)”
And you respond with…
“Why yes you can. For the small fee of $XXX,000, we will set you up with this product and handle training and system migration. We will also continue to give you zero-day support for $XX,000 annually. We see this as fair…after all, nobody knows this product better than its authors.”
This is essentially how Red Hat does business, and they seem to be doing alright for themselves.
Are you implying IBM contibuted more?
From a cursory look IBM has contributed mainly to linux and also lists device drivers for thier eserver line in thier list of contributions.
They have a few other contributions but none on the scale of openoffice or netbeans or NFS. With out openoffice redhat, novell and other linux distros wouldn’t even be where they are on the desktop against Microsoft windows and Office.
Like I said IBM and Novell have only contributed what matters to them and thier business. And you provided the proof thanks.
Sun’s contribution is more altruistic, wouldn’t you say? So who is the bigger contributer, the one who does more for the whole community or one who does more for self gain.
The Sun-Netscape Alliance Releases PKI Library Source Code
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/st…
mozilla.org to Include Open Source Security Technology, Completing Feature Set Of Open Source Browser
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/st…
http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-foundation.html
Sun heavily contributes to mozilla.
I sorted by name to remove the duplicates and I agree that subportions are named in the list, however I think the following are important.
ATM on Linux
JFS as you mentioned
JTOpen
Jikes
Linux Scalability effort
Object REXX
Power PC for linux
SOAP4TCL
Trillian Project
WebServices for J2EE
XML4J & XML4C
Eclipse
Cloudspace
IBM due to its services focus release components into OpenSource to allow them to be included rather than rebuilt. I am not sure of the total merrits of the whole and agree that both companies have done a lot. To the point where both list same projects like Mozilla, I don’t want to get inot a submission count, but I do know that IBM are committed to releasing a lot of stuff open source, as it helps not hinders its business.
I am not saying they have done more or less, but to counter your list of OpenOffice, Netbeans and NFS, they have Eclipse and JFS, OpenOffice was bought by Sun then opensourced, to directly assist Sun to get into the desktop market, as they knew a Office replacement was neccessary. Altruistic is a motive IBM has, as do all/most businesses and individuals.
I don’t want to get into a one company better than another, as I believe both have done good work and contributed greatly. Sun historically has given out significant work (NFS is a great example) and they currently opensourcing previously closed products, NetBeans, OpenOffice, Solaris which is great. IBM is currently supporting development projects with many components, API’s and modules. They have deliberatly not produced a Linux distribution, believing partners can do it better.
I am hopeful that Sun’s latest moves will assist the company and enable it to continue to do what it has always done. I hope like IBM it can survive its founder and become a long term corporate player.
Yeah, Sun used co-develope netscape when netscape started to die. They played a huge role in Mozilla.
“I really don’t care whether Sun opens Solaris fully or not as long as they offer it “free” in terms of $$$ and reasonable licensing/support options.”
That’s almost the complete opposite of how I feel about the issue. I’m far more concerned with the freedom to be able to use and modify the OS/Apps as I see fit than I am the “freedom” to avoid paying for it.
In any event, the article itself was hardly worth reading – I have no idea how it sparked this sort of heated debate.
You know what? If open source did cost the software industry jobs or were to collapse it entirely, tough shit. You’d best find a new career if it frightens you that much. Maybe MS will hire you.
Most open source contributors have software programming jobs, so if programming jobs go it seems open source will likely decline unless if people start doing it more of a hobby which is not likely.
It all evens out, I think.
Rebuttal in one sentence: Socialism has been proven time and time again throughout history to fail everytime it has been tried.
So has capitalism. Which is why we have mixed economies in nearly all industrialized nations now. Take the US: it is a very interventionist and protectionist country, two principles that are at odds with true capitalism.
Of course, the funny thing is that ESR is far from being a socialist – he’s more of an anarcho-capitalist – which leads me to believe that you haven’t, in fact, read the Cathedral and the Bazaar.
I think the problem with any kind of patents is it is too generic.
In 80’s one big chemical company used the patent to prevent a smaller company to introduce a new coating chemical that would be cheaper and safer to use on appliance despite that the new chemical used different kinds of ingredients.
IIRC, a few years ago a research group was sued to stop the research on curing certain diseases because the treatment happen to be directly on a particular gene that was patented by a pharmaceutical company. However, that company never did any researches on the treatment of that diseases.
Another case is the one-click-check-out patent by Amazon. Other internet shopping sites have to use more than one-click to check out. What happens if another company is granted patent the two-click, three-click, and so on?
Note that I am not against patent but against the abusive power of the patent and the granting criteria.